Drinking from the Trough Read online

  As for those nicknames—The Pig, The Snout, Miss Piggy—they came from her winter appearance, not her behavior or eating style.

  Marcie was a palomino dun American paint horse. She was a little stockier than Franny and a bit taller, about 14.1 hands. In the summer, her coat was grayish-gold with bright chrome (white) paint markings, and her face was bald (which means white, not hairless).

  In the winter, her chrome stayed bright white, but she grew a longer, much lighter coat and such long muzzle hair that her white nose looked like a pig snout. That first winter, Earl dubbed her The Pig, and we shared many happy times calling her The Pig from then on.

  The rest of her paint pattern was overo, the second most common paint horse pattern (tobiano is the most common). In addition to her bald face, Marcie had one solid-colored leg, a white pattern of hair that rose up from her abdomen, and no white on her back. She was also a dun, with the characteristic dark dun stripe down the center of her back all the way down her tail, plus the distinctive zebra stripes on the backs of her legs.

  On the left side of her face, she had a little gold hair, and her left eye was brown. All the hair on the right side of her face was white, and her right eye was blue.

  The genetics of horse coat colors and patterns are complicated, usually confusing, and make for lots of interesting reading, discussion, and arguments for those so inclined. But regardless of what anyone called her pattern, Marcie was a gorgeous, colorful animal.

  Before Marcie and Franny, my riding experience had been fairly limited. Chico, Earl’s cantankerous old nag, was the first horse I’d had total access to. I met Earl, and Chico, my senior year of college.

  Chico had never been properly trained and was cranky and hard to manage—a butthead, Earl and I both agreed.

  Franny and Marcie had spent their first years on the wide-open range as members of a herd. Left on their own, they’d be a handful and then some. We wanted horses that were easier to ride than Chico, and that meant expert training right from the beginning.

  After they’d finished their initial training at a ranch near us in Fort Collins, we brought them home and began riding them in the corral and on the nearby trails. At first, I rode Marcie even though she was bigger, because I was scared to ride little Franny, who was so full of pep. Riding Franny was like driving a Mercedes—smooth, fast, and responsive, but you better pay attention every minute!

  Marcie was a Mack truck—solid and dependable—but for the long haul, you might need to sit on a rubber doughnut to protect your backside. When Marcie trotted, I learned to ride either standing up in the saddle or in a posting trot, where, with each stride, I rose up out of the saddle for a beat and then sat back down for the next beat. That’s easier on the horse and a lot more comfortable for the rider too.

  When Marcie was four years old, we began jumping lessons, and on the advice of our instructor, I switched to riding Franny most of the time. I was a more confident rider by then, and I discovered that Franny was, with all that peppiness, great fun to ride and jump.

  Marcie was a determined jumper, no matter the setting. She did well in both indoor and outdoor arenas, but one of our favorite places to play was the beautiful open cross-country jumping course at Lory State Park, in the foothills west of town. The course had lower jumps as well as high fences, which I appreciated because I insisted on a two-foot limit on my jumping—due to my fear factor, not either horse’s jumping ability.

  Jumping in the open course was a lovely change from arena riding. I especially liked the section where we jumped into a little corral, then jumped out the opposite side without breaking stride: in and out, no stopping in the middle. Marcie always kept good form, knees tucked up tight, sailing over the jumps with room to spare.

  Marcie helped others learn to jump too. Twelve-year-old Shira was mad for horses, as many preteen girls tend to be. She’d taken basic equitation, and now she wanted to learn to jump. Marcie was willing to oblige.

  Earl accompanied Shira and her parents to her first jumping lesson on Marcie, with Franny in tow. Shira’s mom kept Franny in Marcie’s line of sight so Shira (and Marcie) wouldn’t have to deal with the horses’ separation anxiety. They all did fine.

  After that, for many years’ worth of lessons and shows, Shira’s mom drove their SUV to our place, hitched up our trailer, loaded up Marcie and Franny, and drove off to wherever Shira’s next lesson or competition was. Marcie was a good teacher; Shira became a good jumper and won many ribbons.

  Marcie continued jumping until she was twenty-nine years old. She was still willing, but we both knew jumping was too hard on her aging bones. So we learned pole bending, a rodeo event.

  Marcie charged the poles just like a pro rodeo horse (though at a trot, not a run), weaving in and out and then running full-out straight home to the finish line. She wasn’t the fastest horse ever at her age, but she was certainly the most enthusiastic. Pole bending was sheer delight for both of us.

  Anna, my classmate and across-the-street neighbor, moved her horse, Aria, in with Marcie after Franny died. Aria had been unhappy alone in her solo pen, and Marcie had missed Franny. We’d expected that putting them together would help both horses.

  What we didn’t expect was that Marcie would become the Notorious Barn Diva.

  Despite being smaller than Marcie, Franny had always been the boss mare of our little herd. Now that Franny was gone, Marcie was finally in charge, and she made sure Aria knew it. She and Aria got along well, but Aria was clearly subordinate. If they were both in the aisle of the barn and things were a little crowded, Aria immediately backed out, yielding right of way to Marcie.

  Marcie sang like a bad opera diva too, always at four in the morning. She’d done this occasionally before, but now that she was the Notorious Barn Diva, she screeched almost every morning. Hours before breakfast time, she’d let loose her high-pitched whinny that could crack your eardrums and shatter wine glasses. We worried that the neighbors would complain about our equine rooster, but they reassured us that they preferred the Diva over having student housing high-rises next door.

  Being Barn Diva didn’t solve the problem of Marcie missing Franny on our rides. We finally hit upon a solution that worked: Earl rode his mountain bike on the road in Lory State Park while I rode Marcie on the trail that paralleled the road. It worked beautifully, and after a few bike-plus-horse rides, Marcie was good to go with me on her own.

  My idea of heaven is riding Marcie on a hot summer day in Lory State Park—brilliant blue sky above us, rolling foothills around us. There is a special kind of peace riding alone on horseback in such beauty.

  She and I often rode the wide circle of trails that looped through the park. On one of those hot, sunny days, we were high up on the west side of the park when a loud roar shattered the quiet. Marcie didn’t panic or bolt, but her head and ears went straight up, and, uneasy, we both looked for the source of the roar.

  I was pretty sure we’d heard a mountain lion, but I tried to convince myself that it was only a powerboat revving up on Horsetooth Reservoir, which was east and downhill of us. Acoustics can play tricks on the ears in mountain country; surely there wasn’t anything to worry about, I reassured Marcie.

  We picked our way down the trail, pretending (at least on my part) to be nonchalant as we made our way with controlled swiftness out of mountain lion habitat. As we arrived back at our rig, a boat engine, readily recognizable, started up. Its deep whir sounded nothing like what we’d heard up on the trail. I loaded Marcie into the trailer, feeling a mix of awe that we’d heard a lion—it’s rare to hear or see them—and relief that we’d only heard one.

  Marcie and I enjoyed a lot of surreptitious rides too. At my junior high school, teachers were required to be at school half an hour before school began and to stay half an hour after classes let out at two thirty, to handle parent meetings and phone conferences or to work with kids who came in for extra help. Many teachers used that time for prep and homework grading, but I enjoyed working
from home and did most of those tasks there, sometimes in between patient visits or while recovering a cat from surgery.

  I’m a morning person, and I was usually the first teacher to arrive. I enjoyed the peace and quiet of school before the kids came, and I loved to see the school buses arriving, loved watching the halls fill up with energetic kids every morning.

  On most days, I followed the rules and stayed until three, but some days were so beautiful that, if I didn’t need to stay for students and parents, I sneaked out of the building, telling only the receptionist that I would be out and that I had my cell phone, in case someone needed to reach me.

  I’d be home by a quarter to three, change my clothes, load Marcie into the horse trailer, and be in the saddle at Cottonwood Glen Park, four miles from home, by three thirty—plenty of time for a ride in the undeveloped land beside the park before supper. Even in the waning light of winter’s short days, we could squeeze in at least a forty-five-minute ride.

  These rides weren’t just goofing off. When you ride a horse, you must focus entirely on the horse. You must be aware of anything that might spook the horse. Marcie taught me early on to stay focused on her while we rode. That meant I had to let go of worries about everything else. Riding demanded that I keep my mind clear of school issues, work that I had to do, and anything else that didn’t have to do with being on Marcie, riding, right now, where we were. My focus had to be one-hundred-percent on riding my mare. Others might pay thousands of dollars for therapy to help them learn mindfulness and how to deal with the stress of daily life. I had my hundred-dollar horse.

  When we’d finished our ride, I was relaxed and reenergized. By the time we got home, it was time to feed the horses their grain and hay, check the water level in the trough, and sweep out the barn. After that, I’d enjoy a nice hot shower, fix dinner, and spend a pleasant evening with Earl.

  Being a diva didn’t change Marcie’s willingness to teach. A few years after Franny died, Marcie landed a job as teaching assistant for CSU’s new veterinary acupuncture program.

  The acupuncture classes involved a series of five four-day weekends. Students came from far-flung places as well as our immediate region. The course needed “sub animals”—animals that could substitute for real patients so students could practice locating the points where acupuncture needles would be inserted.

  Dogs were readily available, so students had plenty of canine practice for identifying meridians and acupuncture points. But in the early days of the program, sub horses were hard to find. I became the dude wrangler, bringing Marcie to the lab classes, along with Scootsritealong, the young paint gelding we’d bought three years after Franny died.

  Initially, I didn’t intend on taking the course myself. I was teaching school full time and had more than enough to keep me busy.

  I was also teaching a human anatomy class at Fort Collins High School. I’d been bringing in guest speakers every Friday, drawing on many of my professors and colleagues to talk about various aspects of comparative anatomy. When I realized that one of those Fridays coincided with an acupuncture course weekend, I contacted my friend and old classmate Marybeth, who would be staying at my house while she was in town as a teaching assistant for the course. Would she be willing to talk to my students about animal acupuncture and how it related to understanding the anatomy of the patient?

  She agreed. I warned her that high school kids were hard to impress, but that, so far, they’d enjoyed the guest speakers.

  I volunteered Tipper the Wonder Husky as her sub dog for the presentation. Tipper was, as always, hyper, happy, and delighted to be back in school, where hundreds of kids could pet her and admire her beauty.

  Marybeth demonstrated an acupuncture point located on the top of Tipper’s head, called GV-20. It’s a “relaxing point”; GV stands for Governor Vessel, one of the meridians. The point number on that meridian was number 20, hence the name, GV-20.

  Tipper, grinning and practically vibrating with excitement, stood, tail wagging furiously, beside Marybeth at the front of the small science lecture hall. Marybeth explained that acupuncture needles don’t hurt, and then she slid the needle under Tipper’s skin, talking slowly to the kids as the needle made its way to GV-20. The kids watched in silence.

  Tipper slid gently down, glassy-eyed, onto her side.

  Relaxed? If she were any more relaxed, she’d be dead.

  The kids gasped, and their excitement was palpable. It was “way cool” to watch a hyperactive dog fall asleep after having one needle placed in the top of her head. I think I was most thrilled of all, but I kept quiet, enjoying the high school students’ enthusiastic responses to learning something totally new. They asked questions nonstop until the bell rang.

  After class, I went to the vet hospital to see the acupuncture course coordinator and said, “Count me in!” I knew there was a years-long waiting list, but she bumped me to the next available class, probably because I provided the horses.

  A year later, I had passed the grueling three-part international examination on the first try, completed my internship—first in Colorado and later in Florida—with Marybeth, and become a certified veterinary acupuncturist. I was chosen to be an equine teaching assistant for the acupuncture course and ultimately taught many veterinarians how to find acupuncture points on horses. By then, CSU had its own “teaching horses,” but I continued to practice my labs at home on Marcie. Horses are still my favorite patients for acupuncture treatment.

  As a full-time teacher and vet who worked Saturday mornings in my clinic, I treasured my Saturday afternoon luxury of a long nap on my Uncle Tom’s ancient couch. It’s the same couch my sisters and I slept on when we were kids visiting him in his little one-bedroom house on Mountain Avenue, the same couch I used when I lived in that house before I married, the same couch I still have, twice-reupholstered, its time-rotted cushions replaced. It’s an excellent sleeping couch.

  One Saturday afternoon in February when the weather was worse than nasty, the ringing phone woke me from a sound sleep. Groggy, I picked up the phone and mumbled a greeting.

  It was Marylynn, our corral neighbor. Marcie was down on the ground, kicking with pain.

  I rushed outside. My twenty-three-year-old gold-and-white beauty was writhing on the cold, soggy ground in the corral. She was soaked, completely coated with brown mud, and in the throes of extreme distress.

  I didn’t need to do a diagnostic workup in the mud; I knew what was wrong. It didn’t take a veterinary degree to see that Marcie was seriously ill with severe colic, a condition she’d been plagued with all her life.

  Colic is a generic term for abdominal pain. There are many causes for the pain, though we don’t always know the specific cause. Marcie had more attacks of colic than I can count. Hers were always the spasmodic type, as opposed to a torsion, or twisting, of the bowel or a dead piece of intestine, either of which would have required expensive surgery.

  Most of the time, we’d treat her intravenously with medicine and reduce her feed for a couple of days, and the colic would subside. Sometimes, she was so ill that we had to take her to the CSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital. Colic is a medical emergency; a horse can die from it.

  Marylynn, Earl, and I watched out for each other’s horses. Earl and I checked up on the horses all the time, both day and night. So did Marylynn. How long had Marcie been in trouble while I’d slept, oblivious to her agony?

  I shook off my guilt and took action.

  This was clearly an emergency; Marcie needed to get to the hospital as quickly as possible. But Earl was working in Denver that afternoon, and I hadn’t yet learned how to hook up our horse trailer to the new truck.

  Marylynn volunteered to haul my quivering, shaking Marcie in her huge stock trailer. I loaded Marcie into the trailer; Marylynn said to not tie her in as we normally would, in case she went down. I took my seat next to Marylynn, and off we went.

  We pulled up to the large animal entrance at the hospital. I unloaded Marcie, and
Marylynn returned home.

  As soon as Marcie was admitted as an emergency, I called Earl and told him to get home fast; Marcie was extremely ill and might not make it.

  Clinicians, residents, and students hustled to save her. Her blood chemistries were beyond abnormal. That, combined with being wet and cold, were the likely cause for her twitching and spasming muscles.

  Staff and students ran liters of warmed fluids into her IV under pressure; drew blood for more analysis; and administered pain medicine, medicine to calm her gut, and more medicine to correct the abnormal electrolyte levels in her blood. They cleaned her up as best they could and covered her in blankets to keep her warm. They watched her closely for what seemed like hours before moving her into one of the stalls in the special colic cases section of the hospital.

  The aggressive emergency treatment worked—Marcie would live!

  She was, without exception, the sickest horse I’ve ever seen who survived.

  When it was clear that she was going to recover, the students tried out the hospital’s new horse-washing station on her. Marcie loved the warm water and attention. I think she felt better just getting all that mud off. Her fuzzy gold-and-white winter coat practically glowed. She was so shiny and clean that she looked ready for a horse show.

  Soon after, she was able to come home and resume her normal life. As she got older, she had fewer colic episodes, and they were less severe. We attributed her improvement in part to a special diet Marybeth formulated for her and the monthly acupuncture treatments I gave her.

  And in the end, colic, as dangerous and frightening as it was, wasn’t what killed her.

  Marcie and I had a relationship that went far deeper than most human-animal bonds. She seemed to realize my status as one learning to ride again as I healed from a shattered hip and subsequent surgeries. Marcie was so gentle with me during my recoveries; were it not for her, I doubt I would have ever been able to resume riding.